Optimism and Love

Are We Biased about Love?

Recently I was interviewed by David Edmonds on my recent research project on optimism and the podcast of the interview is now available at Philosophy 24/7, a new series of philosophy podcasts on topics that interest all of us and are relevant to our daily lives.

The conversation starts from the results of psychological research showing that we are biased when we think about our relationships and make predictions about how long they will last and how satisfying they will be. Essentially, we are overly optimistic about the success of our relationships and discount evidence suggesting that divorce and separation are very common, holding on to the belief that our romantic partners have ideal qualities and that we will be with them for a long time, thoroughly enjoying our time together.

One question is whether this unrealistic optimism, which can be seen as an instance of irrationality given that we believe against the evidence, is beneficial or harmful to our relationships. Research presents somewhat conflicting results on the costs and benefits of optimism, but one influential view is that some moderate optimism is good for us, helping us cope more effectively with crises.

I hope you enjoy the interview!

Building a Successful Team

At a roundtable event at the House of Lords earlier this week there was much talk about partnerships and sustainability. The topic was the use of museums to enhance health and wellbeing. An All Party Parliamentary group is currently undertaking an Arts, Health and Wellbeing Inquiry and the event sought to showcase museum projects and to stimulate discussion and debate.

 

The view from the stairwell
The House of Lords

Most of us would agree that publically-funded institutions ought to be vehicles of social justice, placing public engagement at the heart of their activities. In fact the Museums Association have just signed up to an ethical charter promoting the very same. Yet the reality is that many in our communities feel excluded from toff's palaces, Lord Lupton's term, not mine. In the awe-inspiring surrounds of the Lords, the idea of institutions such as the British Museum, the Royal Academy, the Tates et al, building partnerships with the socially, politically and economically excluded, seemed more than a little surreal. Still, feeling the weight of the establishment supporting the burgeoning field of arts, health and wellbeing felt cause for optimism.

I was inspired as ever by the wonderful Gillian Wolfe who talked eloquently about the importance of relationship-building in achieving sustainable partnerships. She compared this task to constructing successful human relationships; they need time, trust and commitment. She knows of what she speaks. For over 30 years she pioneered innovative programmes for those deemed marginalised and excluded at Dulwich Picture Gallery, advocating public engagement well before the term was common parlance.

As she stated on being awarded an honorary doctorate at Canterbury Christ Church University in 2014: 

"I've been very lucky to have had the freedom to create innovative routes to engage non-traditional audiences such as disaffected youth, those with mental and physical disability, the elderly and notably those suffering early stage dementia and their carers. They are all embraced in enhancing cultural experiences every day of the year. The reward is always seeing the delight and joy it brings."

In a similar way, building a successful interdisciplinary team has been challenging yet rewarding. The freedom to think big without the usual restraints and frameworks of academic life, e.g. the Research Excellence Framework (REF), student satisfaction surveys, etc. has been liberating and has facilitated innovative and ambitious plans. Yet it is a challenge to bring a group together, and to embrace the differences in disciplines, training, and life experiences.

Some of the key elements that have helped build the team are:

• spending time together in different contexts - this has enabled us to bond, shape ourselves into a distinctive group, and has given us space, generating the energy needed to be creative
• listening to, and learning from each other - this has led to many fascinating conversations taking place, generating new ideas and approaches
• good leadership - this has involved attending to task and social elements - to keep the team on track, and to engender a sense of belonging
• sharing ups and downs - as with any relationship, things don't always have an upward trajectory, and here humour and acceptance has been valuable, to sustain team spirit and to and to generate trust. 

This blog is one way that we have developed ideas, initiated conversations amongst core team members, collaborators and the wider community, and is a record of a successful team building.

Mental Health and Success in the News

Almost every week we read about the "unexpected benefits" of mental distress: people with depression are more accurate in their judgements, people with mania are more creative, people with anxiety are perfectionists. How should we interpret this literature, and is it a good thing to associate diagnostic labels to general patterns of behaviour that are viewed as positive?

Dianne Harris, Wellcome Images

This is a question I asked myself a lot recently, facing the reactions that my work on project PERFECT provokes in people with lived experience of mental distress, academics and the general public. PERFECT is about the potential benefits of imperfect cognitions (delusions, confabulations, distorted memories) and thus it often emphasises such benefits in the context of the behaviour of people with a psychiatric diagnosis.

One reaction is the Enthusiasts'. They believe it is wonderful to battle stigma by talking about people with mental distress in a more balanced way, highlighting the positives as well as acknowledging the negatives. The opposite reaction is the Sceptics'. They are wary of sweeping claims romanticising what by many is experienced as pain, distress, isolation, failure.

What should we think when we are told that anxiety makes us more successful performers and depression makes us more knowledgeable about ourselves? (Links are to popularised versions of these claims in the media, not to research articles in academic journals). I think we should first distinguish between the more and less severe form symptoms can take. A pinch of anxiety might make us more excited before an important performance, keeping us on edge and motivating us to prepare better. A depressive mood may be a powerful antidote to the overwhelming optimism we generally experience when we assess ourselves and our prospects. But crippling anxiety and major depressive episodes are no fun, and seem to deliver no benefits at all, rather than maybe develop resilience in the people who survive them.

This is a message we get clearly from the first-person accounts we publish in Imperfect Cognitions (see Emily Troscianko on anorexia): sadly, some situations have no silver-lining.

To explore these issues in the context of our interest in "striving and thriving" will help us map the relationship between mental health and success. This task will be partly empirical as it will require to collect information about how people behave and how their mental distress affects their behaviour, and partly conceptual as one will have to have a pretty good idea of what success entails in order to collect data that are relevant. Michael's last post helps with clarifying what the conceptual questions may be like: Is the successful person the one who finds meaning in what she does, or the one whose measurable achievements exceed expectations? Is there a notion of success that can capture both aspects?